he is preparing for
himself a dreadful fall. He will attempt, and he will fail signally,
utterly. His own miserable experience will make him sure of it, if he
will not believe it, as Scripture declares it. But it is not unlikely
that some persons, perhaps some who now hear me, may fall into an
opposite mistake. They may attempt to excuse their lukewarmness and
sinfulness, on the plea that God does not inwardly move them; and they
may argue that those holy men whom they so much admire, those saints
who are to sit on Christ's right and left, are of different nature from
themselves, sanctified from their mother's womb, visited, guarded,
renewed, strengthened, enlightened in a peculiar way, so as to make it
no wonder that they _are_ saints, and no fault that they themselves are
not. But this is not so; let us not thus miserably deceive ourselves.
St. Paul says expressly of himself and the other Apostles, that they
were "men of like passions" with the poor ignorant heathen to whom they
preached. And does not his history show this? Do you not recollect
what he was before his conversion? Did he not rage like a beast of
prey against the disciples of Christ? and how was he converted? by the
vision of our Lord? Yes, in one sense, but not by it alone; hear his
own words, "Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not _disobedient_ unto the
heavenly vision." His obedience was necessary for his conversion; he
could not obey without grace; but he would have received grace in vain,
had he not obeyed. And, afterwards, was he at once perfect? No; for
he says expressly, "not as though I had already attained, either were
already perfect;" and elsewhere he tells us that he had a "thorn in the
flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him," and he was obliged to
"bruise his body and bring it into subjection, lest, after he had
preached to others, he should be himself a castaway." St. Paul
conquered, as any one of us must conquer, by "striving," struggling,
"to enter in at the strait gate;" he "wrought out his salvation with
fear and trembling," as we must do.

This is a point which must be insisted on for the encouragement of the
fearful, the confutation of the hypocritical, and the abasement of the
holy. In this world, even the best of men, though they are dead to
sin, and have put sin to death, yet have that dead and corrupt thing
within them, though they live to God; they have still an enemy of God
remaining in their hearts, though t